In conventional data protection concepts, protection or recovery of data between a processing computer system that requires the data for processing in plaintext, and a protection system that includes, for example, one or more data servers, occurs through a password mechanism. In the processing computer system, a password is required that is used to encrypt or decrypt the respective data. Conventionally, the password must be entered in plaintext by a user of the processing computer system. This comes with the disadvantage that unauthorized third parties (criminals) may get access to the password, for example, by a keylogger, or that abuse may occur by a system administrator or another person with access to the processing computer system. Another disadvantage is that an authorized user, who knows the password, may be subject to bribery or blackmail and thus unauthorized third parties may also get access to the password.
It could therefore be helpful to provide for more secure data management in a computer network of the type mentioned above to protect the data as far as possible against manipulations.